Six Months In

"February 25th, 2010: I had to get up at 5:00am just so I could go for a thirty-minute swim in relatively empty lanes down at the Y this morning. Had my regular smoothie for breakfast but threw in some blackberries – instead of raspberries – just to mix it up a bit. Work was typical – lots of meetings, one conference call, two fires to put out. Lunch was spaghetti with the bolognese sauce I pulled out of the freezer earlier in the week. I only got ten pages into my book (Robert Heinlein's The Number of the Beast – tenth book of the year) before falling asleep on the bus ride home. Decided to forgo the run this evening because running in the rain during the late winter months just plain sucks – at least I got in the swim this morning. I couldn't watch yesterday's episode of Modern Family because the Rogers On Demand system is acting up again, so I just continued my rewatch of my Arrested Development DVDs instead. More spaghetti for dinner. Trying to figure out where to travel to this year – maybe Colombia or Brazil (though the Brazil visa requirements are annoying as Hell)? The two weeks I took off at Christmas seem so long ago. I need another vacation."

Wait a minute. That's not what I did today. That's what I might have done if, in some bad alternative universe, I hadn't abandoned my former life to be a bum long-term traveller.

Instead, I got to wake up this morning in a ryokan (Japanese guesthouse) in Kyōto, Japan; after a night spent sleeping on a traditional futon, in a room with a floor covered in tatami mats. I ate grilled fish, pickled vegetables, a large tofu ball, seaweed salad, rice, and miso soup for breakfast. I got on a late-morning shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo, spending the evening taking pictures at Sensōji Temple in the Asakusa district, and the night eating sashimi, yakitori and sukiyaki in Shinjuku. Tomorrow, I have to get up at 4:30am to get to Tsukiji Fish Market in time for the morning tuna auctions, ahead of catching a late afternoon bus to the Five Lakes regions under Mt. Fuji.

It's a tough life.

I've been away from any sense of normality for a little over six months now. I'm halfway through a planned one-year trip; and, given a fourteen hour time difference with Toronto, just about halfway around the world. Unless I stop off somewhere and spend some time refilling the coffers, there's now more travel behind than in front of me. The next time I meet other backpackers, and the inevitable "How long have you been travelling?" talk comes up, I'll be one of the grizzled vets – someone who can speak sagely about communicating in hand gestures and pidgin versions of foreign languages; about concocting an edible meal when all you have is a can of chickpeas, some mayonnaise, two handfuls of spiral pasta and half a serving of spaghetti; about all the different versions of Ring of Fire and Shithead; and certainly about living out of a backpack for more time than the vast majority of people spend in their entire lives.

But I still have a lot to learn. And I still have six more months' worth of stories to acquire; stories which, given the rate I'm currently going, will take me about two years to tell on this blog.

(I was going to compile some six-month travel stats, but didn't want to delay this entry any further in order to compile all the numbers I wanted. So you get a map instead. If the display doesn't load into Facebook, click here instead.)

View Doug's Vagabonding Route Map @ 6 Months in a larger map